A sanity check please

[gdpayne]

OK, I was looking at a pile of pieces of PC junk and thinking "a HTPC would be nice". Thus I'm looking to knock something together with the minimum of cost with the aims of:

• playing DVDs and acting as a DVD jukebox (hard disk size limited). With upscaling so I can ignore Blu-Ray/HD-DVD until someone cracks the protection.
• acting as an MP3 library, etc.
• acting as a DVR for broadcast TV (no Freeview thanks to a ******* broadcast 'notch')
• allowing archive burning of TV onto DVDs
• displaying photos, etc.
• doing useful stuff like web browsing, file server/backup, weather monitor

and the bits I have lying around are:

• AthlonXP 2500+
• MSI Nforce 2 motherboard
• Bits of memory
• a Win-TV PVR 350 (don't ask)
• an ATL Radeon 9550 graphics card
• a DVD burner
• an old, quite large DVD player case
• a 400W PSU

Plan is to add a Zalman Flower heatsink, some big hard disks, put the cards on riser cards, and hack about at the case with a hacksaw to make everything fit inside. With the aid of a hammer, I think it will all fit.

Specific questions are:

1. given the MB has built in audio, what is the best way of getting 5.1 sound into the AV amp. Do I need a new card? (my guess is yes)
2. any problems expected with the ATI 9550 card and either connection to a video display projector, or use with something like FFDshow?
3. how can I ensure that the thing goes into the maximum of sleep modes to reduce power consumption? If it is on all the time, I'd like it be both quiet and frugal.
4. any way of getting DigiGuide EPG info into something that could be used for Tivo like functionality?
5. any obvious bits I forgot?
6. an ideas of other things it could do with it?

The aim is to make it all work for less than £100 excluding the big hard disks needed. Give me the benefit of your knowledge !

 

[Goatboy]

HD DVD won't need to be cracked, it will be possible to rip the contents to a pc legally - managed copy protection it's called.

1. Depends what outputs you have, if you have a digital out then you're sorted.

2. No but anything more than the basic resize options on ffdshow will be too much for your cpu to handle

3. regular windows power options i'd guess, putting system into standby

4. Think there's quite a few programs that do that around

You haven't said what display you have, need vga or dvi or it's not worth doing